America Rejoices, Aunt Becky Changes Intended Profession (etc)

While normally, my sex column is fairly PG, with the occasional unable-to-be-scrubbed-away-no-matter-how-hard-you-try-image thrown in for laughs and spits (porn-n-eggs?), this week, I’m talking about the time I got busted. By my boyfriend’s mother.

And I’m warning you, it’s probably not, well, for the faint of heart, those who may be pregnant, those wanting to become pregnant, those with heart conditions, and please call your doctor for erections lasting longer than four hours.

Do not stare directly into the sun.

(it’s really not very graphic at all)(or is it?)

(click to go)(scroll down to stay)

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After I had Ben at age 20, I was left looking around and figuring out what the hell to do with my life. Professionally, I mean. I won’t bother getting into how PERSONALLY having a baby really crimps your style, especially when your kid is the one that screams like a banshee whenever he’s, well, awake.

I’d finished half a degree with a dual major in Bio/Chem, and had some pretty lofty Follow In The Males Of My Family’s Trek To Med School ideas of what I would do. Lofty, perhaps, but also the only damn thing I could think to do with my life. Whomever decided that 17/18 year olds should be in charge of choosing a profession is a wicked genius of a person (and also the reason majors like Media Studies are invented).

There’s a stupid commercial out there and the tagline is something like “Having a baby changes EVERYTHING.” I call it stupid, because I’m pretty sure that’s the most annoyingly obvious statement I’ve heard in my life, for a seasoned parent or not. But in the case of my schooling, it was irritatingly spot on.

Even if I’d been able to get into med school, which is either highly or only slightly laughable, as a single mother, I was aware that something was going to have to give. And if I’d chosen school, my son would be without a real mother at home (although I could have gotten a life-sized cut out of my picture and insisted that it follow him around creepily watching him as he went about his day), until he was approximately 26 years old.

Figuring I’d take my chances on extra-massive therapy bills for him later on (mental note: deposit money into Future Therapy Account every time I tell The Internet about my kid), I buckled down and made my choice: Ben.

Which left me with another choice: what the shit was I supposed to do now? I had to finish A degree in SOMETHING, and preferably something I could, oh, I don’t know, get a salary upon graduation WITHOUT asking if they wanted fries with that.

And as I saw it, my future was a toss-up between teaching and nursing. Neither of which were anything I’d ever considered as actual career options before then, so I chose what I considered to be the lesser of two evils. For approximately 12 minutes.

Yes, my friends, it’s true: I considered becoming a teacher for about 12 minutes. I even went as far as to try and say “I’m going to be a TEACHER” out loud. It was when I couldn’t contain my laughter AFTER that statement that I reconsidered my initial thought. The thought of me as a teacher was as laughable as the thought of me as a nurse.

I have the highest regard for teachers, really, I do. They’re tasked with wrangling OUR CHILDREN (or at least the children we know) all day long, and trying to teach them as they bounce off the walls like monkeys.

I pictured myself standing there in front of The Youth Of America, trying in vain to get the kids to stop eating each others’ boogers, my cardigan (I’d have to wear a cardigan if I became a teacher, this I knew) stained and buttoned incorrectly, my eyes puffy from a long night of drinking to make the voices go away, and I knew I just couldn’t do it.

This weekend, the care of 7 of The Youth Of America in my incapable hands, was like a vision into The Future That Could Have Been, and I hated every moment of it. As soon as we got there, the incessant questioning began. It’s like the kids could sense who was least equipped to handle their weird questions and glommed onto it.

“Why aren’t you serving pizza?” (the party was at 2:30 PM)
“Why are the cupcakes green?”
“I thought there would be more kids here” (me too, sweetheart, me too)
“Can we go to Pizza Hut?”
“Is Ben’s baby (points at Alex) a girl?”
“Why isn’t he a girl?”
“What’s his name?”
“Why’d you choose that name?”
“Are you having another baby?”
“Is it going to look like Ben?”
“Can I have some more money?”
“Can I have some more money NOW?”
“Why is that called air hockey?”

This was pretty much all I heard for the last 30 minutes of the party (thank you moon bounce for making them be quiet for an hour and a half), and while 30 minutes sounds like no time whatsoever, I found myself wishing that I had thought to bring a telephone number list to call their parents to pick them up EARLY. See, I’m not so patient. Or teacherly.

So, to all of the teachers out there, Aunt Becky salutes you. I consider you to be among America’s Finest; standing in the trenches and educating Our Youth while I hide at home. Away from the questions I can’t answer.

I too was “going to be a teacher”. Even have the degree to show for it. It isn’t for me. My sister is a teacher (I suspect teaching also isn’t for her…) so I too respect teachers and all they put up with. HOWEVER, several people I graduated high school with (who barely scraped by – and it wasn’t for lack of trying) are teachers. Scares the bejesus out of me. This person who doesn’t understand the difference between “your” and “you’re” is going to be teaching my child?! ACK! Okay. That’s way off subject… Sorry.

I could never work for the Government – the bureaucracy would kill me. Nor could I do Customer Service Rep – I couldn’t possibly be nice to all those idiots day after day. Nor could I do Garbage Woman – for obvious reasons.

I’m with you on the teacher thing, I can’t stand kids, I know that sounds awful but I really don’t like children other than my own and even then it’s not all the time. I have no patience and I also have a really bad habit of being incredibly sarcastic with small children that have no idea what sarcasm is, it’s not good.

I, too, could not be a teacher, despite my mother, aunts, and sister all being teachers. Although, I also like the fluffer answer. My husband is a plumber – not sure I could handle that so well either. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it. Thank God it isn’t me.

I couldn’t be an elementary school teacher. I’m awkward and not very appealing to young kids, although I have three of my own, and love babies. I also couldn’t have any kind of desk job, because I can’t stay focused on anything for more than an hour or so. I need constant change during the workday. So, I’m a hairstylist instead. I love talking to my clients all day long, but hate talking to people outside of work…

I could never be a teacher, a nanny, a babysitter or anything at all to do with children not my own. I was surrounded by 6 little girls this weekend. My daughter, unfortunately, had a sleepover the night before I was having a cocktail party at my house. Just a few hours before my party, none of the parents had come yet to get their kid. Six little girls followed me around as I tried to get ready with their ENDLESS questions. I finally put up my hand and decreed not only would there be no more questions, there would be no more talking. You have to do that with little girls sometimes. You’ll see.

I don’t think I could manage being the fluffer either and speaking of….onto your other post.

I think that you totally have to play the Quiet Game with little girls. You’re totally right. My house is always loud. My eldest has a soft-ish voice but the younger two are so loud that physically, it hurts. I guess they can be auctioneers when they grow up. Without megaphones.

I think I could teach high school kids, but probably not English. Never really was very good at English in school. But yeah, those Honey Buckets (we have some of those around here, which, BWAHAHAHA!) are SICK!

I could never be a nurse. I considered it during my last semester of college (I always wanted to do something a bit more medical but HATED my intro biology classes so I stuck with plain chemistry) but after being in the hospital when I had my daughter, I saw first-hand what nurses have to do. 12 hour shifts, cleaning up the carnage after a birth, helping me pee when I couldn’t do it myself. It takes a special (very patient) person with a stronger constitution than I possess.

Being a nurse is something that, like a teacher, takes a certain person. It’s a profession that has a calling and you cannot fake it. I am living proof. As are a lot of the people in my comments. Can’t fake it.

I thought about teaching once upon a time. Though at the university-level (one of my college profs inspired me). I even set off to get a PhD. I stopped after a master’s and thought “what the hell am I doing?” ‘Cause I certainly wasn’t having any fun anymore. And it seemed rather ridiculous to continue.

I could also not be a nurse. My mom was a nurse for many years and God bless her. But no way.

I thought about social work for .05 seconds until I realized what a saturated under-appreciated field that was and figured that writing was where I should go. Because man, writing isn’t saturated and under-appreciated AT ALL ;).

I would be unable to do anything that involves the responsibility for and care of people not in my immediate family.

I’d also suck at being a hair stylist or a sales person. Basically anything that forces me to interact with people for my salary. I worked in IT as a data analyst. Me & data get along great. Me & people, not so much.

I too could never be a teacher. Although I did consider it. Fairly seriously, actually. Until the advisor told me I was too smart to be a teacher (no, I’m not shitting you). Then I decided I wanted nothing to do with that program.

Also, could not be a nurse. There’s all that blood…It’s a damn good thing someone pays me to write. I’m not good at anything else.

I can’t do anything memorizy – I have to be able to look up or figure out the answers at my job using like math and stuff. So doctor is out(especially those ER types that need to remember what kinds and how much meds to give for any given ailment) and I’d never last very long in a middle management position – I’m just not very micro managey.

Anything retail, or involving lots of small children. (Incidentally, teaching falls into that category. Hmmm.) Because I barely have enough patience for my own little monsters and my man, I seriously doubt I’d keep from strangling anyone who wasn’t popped from my crotch or allowed regular access to said crotch. (Wait… does that mean I can’t strangle my gyno? Or my OB? No, I like my OB… nevermind.)

My Bestest Friend Evah works retail, and simply hearing her horror stories makes me want to show up with her one day just to beat the crap out of the idiots who come in. Not kidding. Fucking MORONS. How do so many people lose IQ points when going into a store? >.<;; Gah!

I was a waitress (under-the-table sort) when my cousin was out for oral surgery and needed someone to cover for her. I was there ONE WEEK and I nearly killed people four separate times. I will die happy if I never have to live through that hell again. (Although I agree everyone should work service of some sort at least once, just for the experience. If for no other reason than to evaluate their level of tolerance for stupidity.)

Once, when I was waiting to get my blood drawn, the elderly man sitting next to me peed his pants. It was the most god-awful stench I have EVER encountered and to this day, my stomach turns when I think about it.

Therefore, I could never work with old people. And when I get old, I’ll seriously consider killing myself. Srsly.

I was a Chemistry major, until I figured out that it would cost me another year of school to get that degree. So I switched to Biochemistry. Didn’t really matter anyway, because my intentions were to go to med school. So, I took the MCAT, got better scores than any idiot I knew (but I didn’t really hang around with any of the smart people) in school, looked around at said idiots and decided that there was NO WAY I was spending the rest of my life with those people. Which is kind of my life motto…I should not interact with the public in any way. It’s just a bad idea. So I couldn’t be a teacher, sell anything, appease customers, be nice to sick people, etc. Also, since I took calculus, basic addition and subtraction are completely beyond my capabilities (if there’s no variable or obscure symbol, I’m going to fuck it up. And I’ve forgotten almost all of calculus too. That’s handy.), so no math based careers for me (ie accounting, statistics). I was a receptionist as a summer job during college and even managed to mess that up (not through any fault of my own, unless you count telling the owner of the law firm that he was wrong my fault. But he was.) Also, I’m allergic to animals, so that cuts off another career avenue. I could file things – I’m really good at that – but it just doesn’t pay enough.

So, all in all, it’s good for me to be stuck in a lab, not seeing people too often.

Whomever decided that 17/18 year olds should be in charge of choosing a profession is a wicked genius of a person.

YES THIS EXACTLY THANK YOU.

I got the teaching degree because that’s what I was expected to do (and I hated being a receptionist and saw no other place where my BA in BS [Behavioral Science, a.k.a. Social Studies] would take me). And after I got the pretty little M.Ed.* and took a job as a receptionist to start paying bills, I realised that I’d last as a teacher for maybe a year.

Before I punched a parent in the face.

I love the kids (especially the weird ones). I love the teaching. I can handle the bureaucracy**– parents drive me up the ever-lovin’ wall. Oh, the hypothetical parent I punched in the face? Would have deserved it. I’ve got several candidates from my student teaching days, from the parents who willfully neglected their awesome, smart, and adorably sweet child to the other parent who, instead of paying for dental work, had them pull out seven of the child’s adult teeth that had cavities and then would not pay for dentures.

But here’s the thing about having a teaching degree– I am licensed by the state to mess with children’s minds. Mwahahahaa. The power!

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*Which I can’t have on my badge at work as my credentials because morons would mistake me for a MEDical doctor instead of a Master of Education.
**witness my current gig in hospital admin.

I could not work in service or retail. Because I have a personality defect that makes it impossible for me to embrace the “customer is always right” principle. In fact, I can only every embrace this principle if the customer is me, because I am *always* the one in the right.

See? Personality defect.

Fortunately for me, academic science gives quite a lot of latitude to people who are always right.

Oh god… no, I could not teach. And I’ve hated everyone of my kids’ birthday parties for exactly the same reason you described. Year before last, at my son’s tenth birthday party, a huge screaming fight brought out over who was going to get to eat Mario’s head. (I dont’ know why no one wanted Luigi’s head. Anyone?) The next thing I know I’m screaming at the top of my lungs and my husband is trying to take the butcher knife I had been using to cut the cake from me. Something about frightening the children. On the way home, I told my kids, “That’s it. That is the last cake we ever have that has a character on it.” My daughter started to cry saying, “But, I wanted Bratz for my birthday cake.” Bratz? Oh, hell to the no on that.

I was a junior high teacher before I became a stay-at-home mom. People ask me all the time if I’m going to go back, and I say, “HELL NO!” . . . in my head. Out loud I am much more wishy-washy about it because well, I don’t know.

Back to your question – I couldn’t be anyone in the medical field as much as I would love to be a nurse or a doctor. Two reasons: blood and math. I have a unhealthy fear of both. Having said that, I have nothing but respect for those in the medical field!

So with you on the teacher thing….and I just came from lil moonspun’s conference, and she is doing fine and I love her teacher, not just because my daughter is doing fine, but I couldn’t be in that classroom for more than an hour without screaming.
And I am sure that tomorrow afternoon during the Halloween party I am letting lil moonspun have I’ll want to scream at some point, even if there are only four of them!

I could never be a coroner, work in a mortician, an EMT(sorry Mom), a firefighter (sorry Dad), a cop (sorry step-dad, a nurse (sorry self), work in a pound, work for animal services etc. You getting the common theme here? Dead things. I don’t do dead things. It goes above and beyond the usual dislike for things that are dead. It’s the fact that I’m relatively certain that dead corpses try to suck my soul out. One of these days I’m going to be one of those mothers “I’m sorry little Petey, that your hamster died, now what mommy needs you to do is wrap him up and dig him a little grave. No, mommy can’t touch him, I know you’re only 2…”

I’ve been working with the public for so long in some retail format, it’s ridiculous (jewelry and now banking). I loooovvve when people come to me because I’m wrong, or the company I work for is wrong (usually not the case, I’ve had things thrown at me when people don’t get their way.) I like to call the police on people when they are being stupid….

I think some day I would like to own my own retail store of some sort, I just need to find a product that would be worth my time, something that would make me happy, and make me a shitload of money.

Working for the public was…wow. Just eye-opening. I was a waitress for years and the things I saw were just, yeah. A grown woman, throwing an on-the-floor temper tantrum because she didn’t get the table she wanted? I know you know what I mean.

I could never be a doctor, nurse, or anything in the medical profession.

I could never be anything that deals with numbers. Even if it’s just inputting data into a spreadsheet. I don’t even know what a spreadsheet is, much less how to work one. I get a little dyslexic sometimes.

I could never be a waitress. I have no idea how waitresses can balance 14 drinks on that little round tray without her arm breaking off and spilling every ounce onto the customers.

I could never be a mortician. The dead freak me out.

I could never work in customer service because even when I’m wrong, I’m right. Keep that in mind. Dealing with already P.O’d people would send me into defensive overdrive and I’d probably be the one yelling.

I could never work in a call center because my hearing sucks. I guess you could also say that it’s not always so much my ability to hear, but my ability to pay attention to people on the phone.

I could never be an editor. I make too many mistakes and think my final draft is perfect, until someone edits my work for me.

I could never be a bricklayer. Heavy lifting doesn’t suit me.

I could never work outside for any type of job. Unless it was guaranteed that I wouldn’t work in the rain, excessive heat or cold (anything below 70F or above 75F) I also couldn’t work in extremely sunny conditions….i.e. no clouds. I like partly sunny skies.

I could not be anything in the medical profession. Or anything that doesn’t have strict hours. Because once I have a time that I’m off, that’s when I’m off, bitches. 5 minutes, fine. No worries. Want me to stay longer than that? DIE IN A FIRE!!

I’m with everyone who could never be a teacher. I have the utmost respect for the people who can, and whose calling it is … I would just be dreadful at it. I don’t know what to do with other people’s kids.

And I really shouldn’t do anything that deals with the general public on a regular basis. If the public behaves politely to me, I’m happy to be polite and kind and helpful back. I LIKE helping nice people. But the not-so-nice ones? Yeah, I kind of want to hit them with bricks. Waitressing? I’d be deliberately pouring coffee in people’s laps before the end of my first shift. Phone support? Retail? Other customer service? Would be frequently punctuated with, “DON’T BE SUCH AN ASSHOLE AND I’LL BE HAPPY TO HELP YOU!” and “PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE! LEARN IT! THE WORLD DOES NOT REVOLVE AROUND YOU!” and “YOU ARE TOO FUCKING STUPID TO LIVE! GET OFF MY PHONE/AWAY FROM MY COUNTER/OUT OF MY STORE!” And then I would get my way-too-candid-for-my-own-good ass fired. So there’s a very good reason I do behind-the-scenes admin stuff.

Why won’t people pay me to tell customers exactly what I think of them? That job would rock!

See the problem is that you were with LITTLE kids. I avoid them like the H1N1 plague. Middle schoolers on the other hand would LOVE you. My MS students routinely tell me, “there’s no need for sarcasm,” to which I reply, “when you have taught for 13 years, then you’ll know that yes, yes there is.”

I could never be a manager/supervisor (again). I know this from personal experience. I knew for sure the day that my supervisor called me into her office to discuss the lousy job I was doing of “managing” my people. And, in a moment I will treasure forever, I said that I was open to her thoughts, and perhaps I just needed more explicit guidance; I’d been promoted from within and didn’t have managerial experience, so maybe I didn’t know exactly what was expected of me. And in a moment of “clarity,” they told me that they really wanted me to… “Think outside the box.” That passes for instruction?! But at least at that moment, I knew it wasn’t my imagination; I really wasn’t meant for that job.

And I could never be a carpenter. Whether I’m sewing or cooking or what, my measuring really all comes down to “close enough.” I watched them remodel our house this summer and realized that “close enough” defnitely doesn’t fly when you’re building a house.

Oh, please! My list would be so long that it would crash your blog. Let’s just say that I could never do any job that involved getting up early every day, working with the same annoying people every day, touching anyone, being touched by anyone, dealing with more than one child for more than a couple hours, cleaning up gross/smelly things, anything in the service industry or anything to do with customers that might actually be able to contact me and complain about my cranky attitude.

A security guard in a suburban office building. I dont know how they do it. I dont know if its just the buildings I have worked in but they make them sit on a high chair on a podium and dont let them read or use a computer.

Can you imagine how BORING that is? I catch them nodding off all the time.

Dave and I always wonder how much they get paid. Because to me, I cannot imagine any amount of money that would make that worth it to me. Standing in one spot is painful. Physically. But it takes NO training or education. So I wonder…

Aww, Aunt Becky, as a teacher, this post warmed my little heart. Or what is left of it after The Youth of America have drained it dry. Those blood sucking leeches. Ha ha, just kidding. I love the little bastards. <3

It’s a calling, man. I applaud the HELL out of you. Nurses and teachers get a Get Into Heaven Free card. In your personal life, you could butcher small animals, but since you’re a teacher, man, you’re exempt!

Photographer… I am and have been for a long time a family portrait photographer. You know that poor woman you see at your local portrait studio with a stuffed cat on her head and your child’s snot on her sleeve.. Yup that’s me… Don’t get me wrong, I love my job, but is certainly not for the faint of heart, It does take something special to contend with screaming 2 year old after screaming 2 year old. But something I could never ever be, fast food service. Ick, gross, eww, disgusting!!!

I, too, was going to be the teacher. Have 1/4 of the degree. But after my first year internship, I realized that I would never be more than average at it and might just have to kill the principal from the internship. Most of the other teachers were arsepicks as well. The woman who was my mentor was lovely, though.

Can’t do math beyond making change at lightening speed (which I ROK!)which leaves a lot of jobs out.

Also nothing that would require touching/being touched by people just because they had the money, so that rules out fluffing, massage therapy (the legit kind), nursing, dental hygiene (7th level of hell, that), etc..

So. Admin it is. I can organize your socks off. I work for doctors, oddly. But not in a clinic. Gah. Putting me to work in a clinic would be one way to decrease the surplus population, Mr. Scrooge.

I could not be anything that involves being around groups of young children for very long. I really don’t like the behaviors that come with children and immaturity, and I’m afraid that includes my own. (So often I hear people say they can only tolerate their own children…I can barely tolerate mine…sigh)

This is something I’ve always thought about – every time I dream about winning the lottery – I think, man it would suck to be the person who notifies people that they’ve won the lottery. I wouldn’t do that job, I’d get stabby on like the second jackpot.